Fears over Braidwood plans for 70 new homes

Headspoint Garden Centre' has been demolished, with plans lodged for housing.

Published:09:58Tuesday 05 April 2016

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Claims that the scenic countryside around Carluke would be ruined face a bid to build a 70-home housing estate at Braidwood.

Local residents have lodged strong objections to the scheme to construct the new estate, centred on the site of the former Headspoint Nursery.

A dozen local individuals and families have now written to South Lanarkshire Council, formally asking it to refuse planning permission to Wishaw developer Serene Life Ltd, alleging that its application to build the estate in three phases is designed to avoid a full public consultation and greater scrutiny of its plans which would have been forced on it had it submitted a single application.

Some of the local residents claim that the new estate would mean the creation of practically a new village in Carluke’s Green Belt; several of them state that they had no objections to a far smaller scheme, granted planning permisison in principle in 2012, to build 22 homes on the former nursery site itself.

The current application, however, they claim encroaches into the fields around the nursery, marring prized countryside on the edge of the Clyde Valley and the historic Lee Castle Estate.

One Braidwood couple said that they had specifically come to the live in the area because of that scenery, stating that they “might as well have gone to live in the centre of Glasgow”.as the rural setting of the area would be wrecked by the development.

Others allege that the local roads and services just wouldn’t be able to cope with such a huge and sudden expansion of the Braidwood population,

Council planners are still considering the application and the formal objections and will shortly issue their their recommendation to the council planning committee for it to come to a final decision.

A council source told the Gazette this week:”The countryside on that edge of Carluke is classed as being of special landscape value and any bid to build on it will have to be examined very closely indeed.”

Attempts by the Gazette to contact Serene Life Ltd. for its response to the objections proved fruitless this week.

A council decision on the planning permission bid is expected shortly.